Cranky Hanke’s Screening Room: Violence in the movies
This is a topic that dropped from heaven—or at least from a Facebook acquaintance of mine who sent me a private message that (I guess) was taking me to task for giving The American a good review. The review was never mentioned specifically, but The American was the example used to apprise me that violence is not entertaining, and that all violence that isn’t historical is gratuitous and only illustrates boredom or misanthropy. This rather neatly disposes of D.W. Griffith, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Sam Fuller, Stanley Kubrick and Sergio Leone, pretty much puts the kibosh on the horror genre, takes a chunk out of Mr. Shakespeare, and dispenses with the entire catalogue of Warner Bros. cartoons.
